Boyd, Gerald

ORAL HISTORY OF GERALD BOYD
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
May 14, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is May 14, 2013, and I am at the office of Gerald Boyd here in Oak Ridge. Gerald, thank you for taking time to talk with us.
MR. BOYD: You're welcome. Glad to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's start at the beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised -- something about your upbringing.
MR. BOYD: Well, I'm actually a Tennessean. I was born in Old Hickory in Nashville -- Davidson County -- in 1950, so I'm 63 years old now. My mother and her family were all from west and middle Tennessee. My grandparents were in Old Hickory. My grandfather worked there all of his life. So I was born there and lived there for a number of years. My father was in construction and actually helped build the Old Hickory Dam; you know that's on the Old Hickory Lake there. And then we moved around the country after that for a while following construction jobs that he had. And within a few years, I don't remember exactly how long, we wound up in south Mississippi, where he was from -- his family was all from that part of the country. And he bought a farm and became a dairy farmer. I grew up on a farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: So how old were you when you moved to Mississippi?
MR. BOYD: I was about six.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, Is that right?
MR. BOYD: So, I went to school there and wound up finishing high school, going to Ole Miss to college. But I grew up on a dairy farm. I still wake up at 3 a.m. every morning.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. BOYD: Sometimes I can go back to sleep, sometimes I can't.
MR. MCDANIEL: When did you have to start milking cows?
MR. BOYD: Three o'clock.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean at what age?
MR. BOYD: At seven years old!
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Wow.
MR. BOYD: I did it my entire childhood until I, you know, graduated from high school, moved away to college and still came home and helped out a bit, you know, in the summertime and things of that nature.
MR. MCDANIEL: But you moved away so you could sleep late, didn't you? (laughs)
MR. BOYD: I did! (laughs) I did! But I still don't sleep late. Sort of gets in your system, I think.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have brothers or sisters?
MR. BOYD: I have one brother, Steven, and two sisters, Debbie and Sybil. They all still live in Mississippi. When we graduated from high school, we all went our separate ways to the four corners of the earth and over time, they have migrated back and so they're all there together. Live in the same neighborhood, as a matter of fact.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. BOYD: So they've been trying to get me to come back down there. But I probably won't do that any time soon. My two daughters are here so we'll likely stay here. But I grew up on a dairy farm and when I got out of high school I went off to Ole Miss to college. Got a bachelor's degree in -- a double major in chemistry and biology which got me into the science world which I enjoyed a lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, Ole Miss, I may be making a huge mistake, but Ole Miss is in Oxford, is that right?
MR. BOYD: That's correct. That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: I didn't want to get confused... Ole Miss...
MR. BOYD: Mississippi State.
MR. MCDANIEL: Mississippi State.
MR. BOYD: Yeah, they're in different parts of the world. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, they are! (laughs)
MR. BOYD: In fact, I went to college at Ole Miss with Archie Manning.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. BOYD: He and I are the same age. You know, we weren't best friends or anything like that, but he was the hero on campus. I used to go to... All his football games were there -- his last one when he broke his arm and finally graduated and moved away. Up until that point, Ole Miss had been a real star in football. After that, it all ... (laughs) went away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went away. How funny.
MR. BOYD: So, I finished college and in that time, it was a little difficult to get a job so for two years I taught chemistry and biology in high school south of Jackson, Mississippi. After that, I got a call from the State of Mississippi to see if I was interested in helping them set up an emergency preparedness program. They were looking for somebody with a technical degree -- with a science degree -- that could deal with some of the scientific topics that they were interested in doing. So, I went to work for the State of Mississippi for about seven years.
MR. MCDANIEL: And this was what time period?
MR. BOYD: 1972 -- starting in 1972. That's when I graduated from... well, starting in 1974 when I went to work for the state. I taught high school for two years -- '72 to '74. During that period of time, I worked in a research lab doing research on reflective coatings. It was some of the early research that was done that you now see on the highway with reflective paint.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. Sure.
MR. BOYD: So, back in 1972, there was not such a thing. So the lab that I worked in was doing research on trying to figure out, you know, how you could actually make that work. It wasn't hard to get the reflective coating, it was hard to keep it on the road, so we had to do a lot of adhesives work. And so I did that for a period of time, went to work for the State of Mississippi in what is now the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. And I was there for about seven years, and then I was asked to leave and go to the regional office for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Thomasville, Georgia.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. So for the Federal Emergency Management.
MR. BOYD: Right. So, I left the State Emergency Management Agency and went to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the Southeast Region which had eight states in it. We did emergency planning for nuclear power plant incidents. Three Mile Island had happened about that time and there was a big planning effort around nuclear power plants in communities. And there was an awful lot of national security emergency planning that was being done at that time and I was involved in those sorts of things for the eight states in the Southeast. From there then, I was asked to go to the National Emergency Training Center for FEMA which was in Emmetsburg, Maryland, and I left Thomasville and went to Maryland, and was up there for about 20 years before I came back to Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, Is that right?
MR. BOYD: Yeah, in 2002.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, did you work for FEMA for that whole time you were there?
MR. BOYD: No, I worked for FEMA for part of the time I was there and then I went to work for the Department of Energy. Worked most of the time that I was in Washington was with DOE. I was up there for about 20 years. And then transferred to Oak Ridge from DOE headquarters.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did you do at DOE up in Washington?
MR. BOYD: Well, I was at the National Emergency Training Center for FEMA. I was responsible for emergency planning for transportation accidents, nuclear power plant off-site preparedness and those kinds of things. And DOE was starting to set up the EM program -- the Environmental Management program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: And as they started to put that together, they needed somebody with an Emergency Planning background to help set up the emergency preparedness program within the Department of Energy for the environmental clean-up piece. So I got a call from a guy by the name of Larry Harmon and asked me if I was interested in doing it. I had been with FEMA for about seven years or so, up there. I was the Deputy Superintendent of the Emergency Management Institute at the time, which was a great experience. And so I decided I needed to try my hand at something a little bigger and more challenging and so I transferred over to the Department of Energy in 1998...or 1989... yeah, 1989. Then spent the rest of my time in Washington at the Department of Energy. I was responsible for emergency planning, preparedness for the environmental management office, transportation management, and those kinds of things. And then ultimately got involved in the science and technology program helping manage a program to design and develop technologies to improve clean-up progress in the EM program and ultimately became the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology for the Department.
MR. MCDANIEL: I want to stop right there -- I want to go back and ask you about your FEMA. While you were at FEMA were there any big, you know, national disasters, or things such as that that you were involved in?
MR. BOYD: Three Mile Island occurred when I was with FEMA.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. BOYD: And there was a major new effort to do preparedness planning in communities around nuclear power plants as a result of the Three Mile Island incident. There was a new regulatory guide that NRC crafted and put together as a result of Three Mile Island occurring and I was part of that. I helped design that and get that regulatory guide in place and then followed that with emergency planning activities. There were a number of natural disasters that occurred. I was involved in that to some degree but not a lot. For the most part, I was in the power plant/national security.
MR. MCDANIEL: Nuclear.
MR. BOYD: The nuclear component of it. Transportation of, you know, radioactive and hazardous materials -- I was doing that sort of work which was the reason that DOE was interested in me coming over to work with them is because of the experience that I've had there. So I was involved in some of the natural disaster activity that went on back in those days, but ...the National Flood Insurance Program which you hear a lot about today -- I was part of helping start that. Didn't play a big role in it but I was part of that. It was the very beginning of a National Flood Insurance Program. So there was some natural disaster work I did, but most of it was...
MR. MCDANIEL: Preparedness around the power plants, as you said... So, you said you ended up being the Deputy Director of Science and Technology?
MR. BOYD: The Deputy Assistant Secretary is what the title is. It's a long title. But I was in charge of science and technology for the Department of Energy for environmental issues. So we had teams all over the DOE complex -- we had a team here in Oak Ridge. So we funded all the science and technology effort -- the research and development effort that went on -- to put new technologies in place, to improve the way clean-up was being done and they're being used today all across the DOE complex.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I'm sure that whole time period there where you were involved there were lots of new technologies being developed, you know, and things such as that, that were, like you said, were put in place and still being used.
MR. BOYD: The gunite tanks here at Oak Ridge, I don't know if you've heard about those or not, but they were tanks with radioactive waste buried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They had to be remediated -- meaning that everything had to be taken out of them. So we designed and developed technologies to retrieve that radioactive waste and to remediate those tanks. And those technologies are still being used around the complex today. We did a lot of work in mixed waste, a lot of work in high-level waste, work in D&D and those sorts of things, where we develop technologies to help with that type of work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you're still in the work place so I'll be gentle about how I ask this question. What was the difference between working for the state and working for the Federal Government. Of course, I know there was a big time period difference there, but... you know, you worked for Mississippi for, you said, seven years.
MR. BOYD: Seven years, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: And then you've basically been with the Federal Government?
MR. BOYD: For about thirty.
MR. MCDANIEL: For about thirty years. What is the difference?
MR. BOYD: The politics are dramatically different with the Federal Government, especially in Washington. When you're in a senior position in a federal agency in Washington, you're much closer to the political aspects of what Washington's all about.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: When I was with the state, I was much younger, had a much lower level position. Didn't see a lot of that. There's plenty of state politics but I didn't experience it quite like I did toward the end of my career in work at the Department of Energy because I'd, sort of risen through the ranks, got closer to where the political games are played and you have to live with that. That's a big difference. The resources available to do the job, even though, you know, federal funding these days is difficult to come by, but the Federal Government certainly has a lot more resources to do something than most state governments do. So, there's a big difference in politics, big difference in resources available to do the job. But either one, public service meant a lot to me. I mean, you're doing real work for real people. Doing things that need to be done and it's not about the almighty dollar it's about trying to do something that is mission-related to the health and welfare of the population of this country. So, my public service, which was almost 38 years counting my high school teaching time, was a very, very rewarding time in my life. I enjoyed it a lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you're at DOE, you're the Assistant Deputy...
MR. BOYD: Deputy Assistant Secretary. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Deputy Assistant Secretary and, I guess, you get tapped on the shoulder and said, "Would you like to go to Oak Ridge?"
MR. BOYD: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about that.
MR. BOYD: Well, we had a new Assistant Secretary who was -- an Assistant Secretary is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and so she was my immediate boss. There were about eight or 10 of us that were Deputy Assistant Secretaries that worked directly for her and she had vacancies coming up all over the complex. And so she asked us if we were interested in going to a field office. And some of us said, “Yes, we were,” some said, “No.” So she asked, you know, where would you like to go; give me your three top priorities. And Oak Ridge was my number one pick and, fortunately, bless her heart, she let me come here. Otherwise, I would have wound up at Savannah River or somewhere like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But wanted to come back to Tennessee, wanted to be at Oak Ridge. Always had a lot of respect for what goes on in Oak Ridge. Not that the other sites don't do very good work, but the variety of work at Oak Ridge is dramatically broader than what you see at many of the other sites and it's a very exciting place to be, so that was in 2002 that I left Washington and came here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now, your children were, I guess, young at that point. They'd been, I guess, were born and grew up in Washington.
MR. BOYD: They were born in Maryland. I lived in Maryland, commuted into DC every day to work. They were both born there and were taken home to the house that they lived in their whole life until we moved here. So, one was in the eighth grade and the other was in the ninth grade and so...
MR. MCDANIEL: It was tough.
MR. BOYD: It was a big deal. It was hard decision to make. We weren't sure we were going to do it. Kids had never lived any other place, that's where they'd lived all their life. But they made the transition well. It took about six months before ...they were okay with it...
MR. MCDANIEL: Everybody was happy, right?
MR. BOYD: Correct. Oak Ridge is home, now. I mean everybody loves it here, so it's been good.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you came to Oak Ridge? What was your title?
MR. BOYD: I came here to manage the environmental clean-up program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. BOYD: So for the first year, I was here, I was the assistant manager for EM -- for Environmental Management. That was the reason that I came to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: And what was going on at that time here on the reservation?
MR. BOYD: At the time that I got here, and part of the reason my boss in Washington at the time wanted me to come here, is we were starting what we call the Accelerated Clean-Up Program. So, when I got here in 2002, my job was to develop an accelerated clean-up plan for Oak Ridge. We had Bechtel Jacobs as the contractor who was doing the work for us. They had an M&I-type contract -- a management and integration contract. We wrote an accelerated clean-up plan. The purpose of that plan was to really put a big effort -- a big push on tearing down big buildings. Up until that point, a lot of the work had been soil remediation, dealing with some of the groundwater problems, and doing an awful lot of planning and preparation to get ready for the big D&D work.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they were Bechtel Jacobs, weren’t they? I know they were doing like the K-25 site. But were they doing like at Y-12, and at ORNL?
MR. BOYD: There was very little work going on at ORNL and Y-12. At the time, it was mostly just surveillance and maintenance because there wasn't adequate funding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And so, when we wrote the accelerated clean-up plan, we converted the contract that they had to a closure contract, put them on a path to tearing down big buildings.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: So it was D&D was the priority whenever I got here, we got that plan written. And then for the next, almost 10 years, I guess, that's what the effort was. During that period, we started to recognize that there were issues at ORNL and Y-12 that were serious in nature. Shortly after I got here, we had a release of strontium at the Laboratory that went up a big stack out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: And it contaminated a large part of the parking area for the Laboratory. Cars were contaminated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? And that was just an accidental release, obviously?
MR. BOYD: Yes, it was. But that pinpointed the fact that we've got a lot of issues at the Laboratory that need to be dealt with.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: So we started then to build a plan for doing work at the Laboratory and Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let me ask you a question at this point. So, this was 2002...
MR. BOYD: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, who was running the Laboratory at that point?
MR. BOYD: Bill Madia was the Lab Director.
MR. MCDANIEL: And the company was...BW.
MR. BOYD: UT-Battelle.
MR. MCDANIEL: UT-Battelle.
MR. BOYD: UT-Battelle took over the Laboratory in 2000. Bill Madia was the first Laboratory Director under UT-Battelle. I came here in 2002.
MR. MCDANIEL: And what about Y-12?
MR. BOYD: Y-12, it was BWXT at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, but Y-12 was it under DOE or was it under NNSA?
MR. BOYD: It was still under DOE at the time. NNSA was starting to be formed. And it was around the 2002-2003 time frame that NNSA was formed and Y-12 then became part of that. Although that was the case, there was still a lot of environmental work that had to be done at Y-12 which was my responsibility even though I wasn't part of NNSA so it took a lot of coordination between NNSA and DOE people to make sure that that got done properly.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sorry. So, okay, so, I just wanted to make that clear. So you said there was the accidental release and the contamination of a lot of the vehicles and things such as that and that was at the Lab and that made you realize there were some serious issues there that needed to be dealt with.
MR. BOYD: We were doing two things during that period of time. One was the accelerated clean-up plan which was aimed mostly at the K-25 site. Then we started putting a plan together which we called IFDP which is Integrated Facility Disposition Project, and its purpose was to deal with the contamination in the facilities at Y-12 and ORNL. And it was triggered by that release in 2002 that then sort of spotlighted for us that we really needed to do something about this so we started to put a plan together to do that. Never was able to get adequate funding for that -- for the Laboratory and Y-12 -- until the Recovery Act occurred. And when the Recovery Act occurred and stimulus funds started to flow, we got almost a billion dollars at Oak Ridge to do work at ORNL and Y-12 and so we were able to implement that plan now. It is far from being finished. The K-25 site is getting close to getting close to being finished but the Laboratory and Y-12 still have a fairly substantial amount of environmental clean-up that's going to have to be done.
MR. MCDANIEL: At Y-12?
MR. BOYD: And ORNL.
MR. MCDANIEL: And ORNL?
MR. BOYD: At both sites...
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, at what point... You came to Oak Ridge to be the head of Environmental Management and then you became the ...operations...?
MR. BOYD: Operations Manager
MR. MCDANIEL: Operations Manager...
MR. BOYD: Yeah, I came here in 2002 and for one year I was the Environmental Management assistant manager.
MR. MCDANIEL: Who was the Operations Manager when you came here?
MR. BOYD: There was Jim Hall had left, Leah Deaver had come in behind Jim. She had left and so there wasn't anybody who was permanent for that year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: There were some people that were in on a temporary basis but we didn't have a manager for that first year that I was here. And then I was asked, after a year of managing the clean-up program, if I would take over the Operations office which still had the clean-up program underneath it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right... Exactly.
MR. BOYD: So I became the Manager in 2003 until I retired in 2011.
MR. MCDANIEL: 2011...Well, let's talk a little bit about, you know, when you were in Oak Ridge. I know the environmental clean-up were some of the big issues. What were some of the big issues for Oak Ridge that, you know... Oak Ridge has always been a Federal town, I mean, so anything that happens with the Federal Government and its workers in Oak Ridge effects the community. So what were some of the big issues in your tenure here with the Federal Government and Oak Ridge that you had to deal with or you saw or maybe that came up that have not been resolved yet.
MR. BOYD: Well there are a couple of things -- some positive, some negative.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: We had just started -- the department had just started a modernization effort at the Laboratory when I got here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. BOYD: UT-Battelle was brought in, they gave us a plan that said, we can modernize the Laboratory and turn it into a world-class research lab for the department. And so, we started that process. And over a period of time the entire east and west end of the Laboratory has been modernized -- new facilities. One of the big issues that was at play, internationally, was high speed computing. United States had lost its lead there and that led, then, to an investment by the department to build a high speed computer -- Jaguar -- that's out at the Laboratory today and took back that leadership position from the Japanese. So that was a big thing -- we were trying to modernize the Lab, get leadership computing back, get neutron science back -- we'd lost neutron ...the leadership position in the world to Europe for neutron sciences. The Spallation Neutron Source then brought that back to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: At the same time, that we were doing those things to modernize, we were using third-party funding to do that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. BOYD: So that meant that we'd bring third-party money in, somebody would build the building and we would lease it back. What that does is to put the building on the tax rolls because federal property is not on the tax rolls -- federal buildings are not on the tax rolls.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: So a big issue with the community was always the fact that the Federal Government owned 70 percent of the town but didn't pay taxes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. BOYD: And we paid -- we had payments in lieu of taxes, but they were at a much, much lower rate than a property tax rate. The result of that was there was always a tension there between the department and the community because of that. The result of using third-party financing and building buildings with third-party money and putting those buildings on the tax rolls then increased the revenue -- tax revenue coming into the city which helped a great deal with the relationship between the community and the Department of Energy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: That was one of the, you know, one of the larger issues is, how do you deal with that?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Land use has always been a big issue in Oak Ridge. Most of the real scenic places in Oak Ridge belong to the Federal Government -- most of the river system is Federal land up to the river. It's only on the east end where the city has access to the river on an easy basis. So that's always been an issue of: What do you keep for the federal mission? What do you put in some kind of conservation easement to protect it for eternity as natural, pristine land?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: What do you transfer to the community for re-use.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. BOYD: And we've got a mixture of that in Oak Ridge. Transferring property out on the west end as we clean up K-25 was a good way to transfer property to the community that can be used for economic development purposes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. BOYD: And turning the central campus of the Laboratory into a science and technology park that can bring private industry in and connect with the Laboratory and then transfer technology out of the Laboratory that is good for economic development. So, those kinds of things help the community quite a lot in, you know, dealing with their economic development positions, tax revenues that they need. There's always an issue that will continue between, you know, a big Federal entity sitting right in the middle of a small town.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But we've been able to work those out pretty well over time. I think of all the DOE sites, the relationship between the community and the Department of Energy is better at Oak Ridge than it is anywhere else.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? That's what I was about to ask: Is that typical?
MR. BOYD: It's not typical. Some sites have a pretty good relationship; some have very bad relationships.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But Oak Ridge is probably the best. But Oak Ridge is the only one where the entire Federal operation sits inside the city limits of a town.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. BOYD: Hanford is not that way, Idaho's not that way, Savannah River is not that way, Albuquerque’s not that way. There are DOE sites that are adjacent to communities but not sitting inside the city limits. And so that puts a very different tension into play when it's that way. (coughs) Let me take a break.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, go ahead...Let me ask you this. I know as the Operations Director for DOE and Oak Ridge, you were kind of in charge of all the federal operations, but, you know, the ORNL and Y-12 and K-25 at some point were all... ORNL and Y-12 are still vibrant industrial complexes. How much of what they do, they kind of do on their own and how much was it directly involved with your office. I know you had oversight, but, 'How autonomous were they?' I guess is the question.
MR. BOYD: All of the DOE contractors are fairly autonomous. This is true in a lot of Federal agencies. You give them a contract with the mission that you want them to carry out, certain end products that you expect to see and you let them do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see.
MR. BOYD: But you have to oversee that contract, you have to oversee the safety functions, you have to oversee the milestones that they are supposed to meet and deliver the product.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: So there was a lot of oversight from... and continues to be by the Federal Government. But once you have given a Laboratory contractor a task: "Build the Spallation Neutron Source. Here's the money you need to do it." Then there are periodic reviews that are done to make sure that they're on track, but you let them build it. You let them do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: It's the same way at Y-12. You tell them how many components that you expect to see and then you let them do it but you do reviews and you do oversight to assure that it's getting done. But the Federal Government, the Department of Energy, sets what those things are.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course.
MR. BOYD: Now, there is a real cooperative planning effort that goes on between the Laboratory and the Department of Energy to say, you know, we, as the Laboratory, believe that DOE should do XYZ, then DOE decides whether or not that fits in the overall mission and ultimately gives work plan for the contractor to follow.
MR. MCDANIEL: I guess the contractor, the Laboratory, I mean, you know, they have certain ... a certain set of skills that they're good at and that they have people who can look at the overall -- just like DOE -- can look at the big picture and say 10 years or 15 or 20 years from now we really need to be here as a country and this is how we think we can help get there.
MR. BOYD: That's exactly right. There's a tremendous amount of collaboration between the DOE contractors and the Department itself. It's more so that way in the scientific community. The environmental clean-up community's a little bit different in that DOE's pretty, you know, strict about, ‘Here are the five things we want you to do.' So there's less, probably, collaboration in that arena, but certainly in the scientific arena there's a lot of collaboration between the Department and the scientific contractors -- the Laboratory contractors because -- you just have the smartest people on the planet in these laboratories and you're going to use them to figure out what you ought to be doing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. But I would imagine the downside of having the smartest people on the planet there is, you know, like we've always said in Oak Ridge -- Every Oak Ridger has an opinion and they usually have four or five. (laughter) So what makes people good at what they do sometimes comes along with a little bit of baggage of being strong-willed, too. I'm sure your years in Washington really helped you learn to be able to...
MR. BOYD: Deal with a lot of big egos...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's exactly right...
MR. BOYD: Yeah... You know, it depends on what type of manager you are, what type of person you are. I don't - I have never liked to go into a room to solve a problem and be the smartest person in the room. I have worked for people who are like that. They've got to be the smartest person in the room and do all the talking. I think the smarter people that you can get around you to work a problem, the better off you are. You just have to know how to manage that environment because there are strong opinions, there are strong-willed people who have those opinions and it takes a certain amount of finesse to work it all and make it work and we had plenty of that in Oak Ridge. We had plenty of strong-willed people, plenty of smart people, plenty of egos, so...
MR. MCDANIEL: I have a friend who's a film director and he was a kindergarten teacher for 10 years and I said that was the perfect experience for him to become a film director is to manage creative folks...
MR. BOYD: Herd people around...
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely! That would be a difficult task I would imagine. What were some of the things that came along in your tenure, before you retired from DOE here at Oak Ridge that, you know, you really wanted to accomplish but for some reason you just weren't able to?
MR. BOYD: Well, primary thing is still the environmental clean-up at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at Y-12. To me that is the undone thing that I would have like to have seen at least farther along in its path. It was not going to happen in my tenure but we got the plan together, we got in the baseline, we got in regulatory documents with the state. It's now planned for the out years but it's moving along a lot slower than I'd hoped for. That's the single thing that, you know, we didn't get accomplished.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: We built the fastest computer on the planet, the most powerful neutron source on the planet, the most powerful electron microscope on the planet -- all of that got done. But the thing that we didn't do was to finish up our environmental work at the Lab and at Y-12 while I was in office. That doesn't mean that it's not continuing today but it's on a much slower pace than I would have hoped that it could have been.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were there... were there big projects, I mean, big -- as Dr. Weinberg said, big science projects that you would have like to have gotten to Oak Ridge but maybe one of the other DOE got that project?
MR. BOYD: Well, you know, I don't think so, because we had so many big science projects starting in 2000 up until ... you know, just, still going. But the things that we did over that 10-12 year period of time were about all anybody really should be trying to manage. Building the Spallation Neutron Source, building the high-speed computer, making sure that, you know, everything that needs to be done to go around that is important. Modernizing the High Flux Isotope Reactor, building the first carbon fiber facility for demonstration purposes. Building four institutes with the state on the campus, jointly with the state. Those were the big -- those were big science projects.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. BOYD: And big machines in some regards, too. So, no, I don't regret, from my personal experience -- you ask the Lab Director, they may have some different view - but from my personal experience I have no regrets about what we got accomplished in Oak Ridge while I was here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And I'm not taking credit for that; I was part of a huge team of people that made it happen. But I'm not dissatisfied with any of that. I guess the single thing that I would have liked to see more progress on was clean-up at the Lab and Y-12. Those were the two things that we didn't get done to the degree that I would have liked to have seen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk a little bit about the preservation efforts. And you might be able to explain this a little bit better than I could, as far as -- DOE, from my understanding, DOE has ... they have a kind of stated commitment to historic preservation of its sites and things such as that. Can you explain that a little bit better as far as what their mission is for that?
MR. BOYD: Well, the department has a general historic preservation commitment. It's largely general in nature and it has to be defined at every one of the sites because each of the sites are different, there is a different historical play at each site. What we did in Oak Ridge is not the same thing they did in Hanford or what they did at Idaho, so you have to define what you think that preservation piece ought to look like.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: We attempted to do that here at Oak Ridge and it's certainly things like the Graphite Reactor. The first, you know, operating, full scale reactor ever built anywhere in the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: So it's preserved as a, you know, a museum today.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Lots of things that are of historic significance -- artifacts, documents, equipment, those sorts of things -- have been taken out of facilities and preserved in a way that they can be displayed. They may not be at this point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: The museum itself is an example of, “How do you preserve certain things for historical purposes?” I think there's been a significant amount of disappointment, in a lot of people's eyes, that we weren't able to do more with things like the K-25 building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: There was hope that we could save part of that building, make a museum out of it and people for years to come could actually walk inside. Bill Wilcox and I have had this discussion time and time again, and we desperately tried to do that but the building was never built to stand for a long time. It was built strong, 'cause tearing it down has been a problem, but it was deteriorating in a way -- and was allowed to deteriorate for so long -- and it was deteriorating in a way that you could not fix it with any reasonable amount of funding. So we had to come with a different way to preserve the memory of what that plant was there for, what it did, how it contributed to the nation, but it's not quite what people would have liked. People would have liked to have seen something different but I think it's... the fact is, we waited far too long to try to do that. It was just un-doable. But I think the department has done a pretty good job of making sure that the history and the story of Oak Ridge can continue to be told. The national park idea certainly will help with that if that ultimately comes into being. So I think the department has done a good job. Clearly at Hanford, we've salvaged some of the reactors out there -- that was the big play they had. So some of that has been preserved. A lot of preservation has taken place at Los Alamos, so between Hanford, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge that covers the Manhattan era for the most part. And I think we've done a fairly good job. It would have been better to have been able to save a lot more but under the circumstances I think it's probably a pretty good job.
MR. MCDANIEL: The, you know, there would be people -- and you may want to comment or not comment on this -- there are people who say, “Let's forget our history. We need to forget about that and move forward -- build a new future.” And then there are those who seem to focus on just the history. And then there's, hopefully, some of us kind of in the middle who say, “It's important to remember it but we also need to not remember in detriment to our future, either.” So, I'm sure that's not only in the community but it's also in the Federal concept of what these sites should be.
MR. BOYD: Absolutely. In Oak Ridge, I think we are building the future -- I mean, at a fast pace. What's been done at the Laboratory and Y-12 in the last 10 to 12 years is just amazing. I mean, we haven't forgotten about our history but we certainly have built a new future at the Laboratory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: The Laboratory is not doing what it started out to do today. I mean, it was related to World War II, it was related to nuclear weapons. The Laboratory today is science and, you know, far-reaching new ways of doing things. So we're building the future in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: And I think it's important that we remember where it, you know, where it all comes from. Clearly, there are people in the Department of Energy who would not spend a single penny on historic preservation if it was their call. There are a few who would spend a lot more, but there're not many of them. So most everybody is in the middle somewhere wanting not to spend huge amounts of money but do what is absolutely necessary to preserve those critical pieces of history that we need to preserve.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I would imagine, in your position, you were kind of caught sometimes in the middle between Washington and the community with those kinds of issues and you probably had some tough things to deal with.
MR. BOYD: Absolutely. My personal view -- and it may be because I spent so much time with Bill Wilcox -- I probably would have done more than what we've done if it had been my personal call.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But you get budgets to do things with and you have to live with that and you have to make the best of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: I think it's important to remember the history of where you came from because everything that is being done at the Laboratory today in particular has roots back in what it started out to do. It may not be doing that same mission any more, but the scientific discoveries and the techniques and the technology that they developed in those days are now being used to do other things totally unrelated to what it started for.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And you have to look back at that and know how you got to where you are; what was the basis for it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And it's important to people who came here in 1942-43 and spent the rest of their life here, to be able to commemorate what they did on behalf of the American people. And so, I think there's a balance that you have to achieve and, as you said earlier, for every opinion... or for every person there's four opinions! (laughter) You have to sort through that and try to make it optimal to whoever you can...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, I understand. I guess part of being a good upper-level manager is knowing when to speak and when not, isn't it?
MR. BOYD: Right. It is. And, quite often, we never get that perfect either.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure...
MR. BOYD: There are times when I'm a lot better at it than others. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure... (laughter) So you retired from the DOE in, when? 2012?
MR. BOYD: Eleven, 2011...
MR. MCDANIEL: So, just a year and a half, two years ago?
MR. BOYD: Yeah...
MR. MCDANIEL: And you went to work in the private sector?
MR. BOYD: I took some time off when I, you know, first retired. I had not had a month's vacation in 38 years so I took a couple of months. But, you know, I still wanted to work and probably will for a couple more years. But I wanted to go to work for somebody that I didn't have a big conflict of interest with and almost all the contractors around here I had worked with very closely and it's, you get to be a senior official in the Federal Government you have to be careful about what you do when you leave that position.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: So I went to work for Stoller Corporation out of Colorado because they were not here, they were not in Oak Ridge. They wanted to open an office here, I wanted to stay here and I wanted to continue to work for some period of time. It's an environmental company which I know quite a lot about that business.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And try and help them grow their business for the next few years. I don't know how long I will do it. I'm doing a lot of community service work that I was unable to do when I was with the Federal Government.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Some of it because I didn't have time, some of it because of conflict of interest or because of rules, I could not do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Before we get to that -- I want to get to that, that's kind of what I want to end up with -- but let's kind of go back to when you first came to Oak Ridge with your family. Let's talk about your family life and your social life here in Oak Ridge. I would imagine it would have been -- as you just mentioned -- it would have been difficult to get deeply involved in the community other than in your position because of your position.
MR. BOYD: Correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because, just one thing, you probably worked all the time and didn't have time for it, plus, I would imagine, that you... there are some things you just couldn't do because of that.
MR. BOYD: That's true. You know, when we got here, because it was a new job and we had a lot of big things we were trying to do...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Accelerate clean-up plan for the clean-up, new plan for modernizing the Laboratory, even a lot of the planning for modernizing of Y-12 was starting about that time. Modernizing the ORNL campus -- those were all big things we were working on and I spent huge amounts of time working.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: So, my wife, BJ, did not work for the first number of years because we had the kids just transitioning then, getting into a new school. So she spent a lot of time with them; I got to spend a whole lot less time with them than I wanted to, but I saw 'em on the weekends quite a lot -- had to travel quite a lot while I was doing that, so social time was generally our, sort of, nuclear family.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: We were involved in church so we spent quite a lot of time in our church life. And we had, you know, friends. I made friends pretty easily. I had to be careful about the friendships, what I did, where I went because of perceptions that is of, you know, a tax-paid-for Federal official, you're not doing something you shouldn't do, but you're still able to socialize to some degree. We got to know the neighbors in our community and we were able to spend some time with them. We also, as often as possible, would go and visit family.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay...
MR. BOYD: Because, you know, we spent all of our adult life a thousand miles away from our family until we moved back to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Where's your wife's family from?
MR. BOYD: She's from Alabama. York, Alabama, which is south of Tuscaloosa. So, we were a thousand miles away from our family for 20-something years and coming back here put us a lot closer and we were able to, you know, spend more time with our family and that was helpful, meaningful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. BOYD: And my wife got involved at the high school in cheerleading and coaching and things of that nature and the kids were involved in all those kinds of things. So that's what we spent most of our time, is sort of wrapped around whatever it was the kids were involved in.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, of course. Now, you have two girls?
MR. BOYD: Two daughters.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they're both out of the house now?
MR. BOYD: Well one is... One is not. Erin -- my older daughter, she's still at... she lives at home. Thank goodness, 'cause my wife and I travel all the time, she takes care of the house. My other daughter, Katy, is in Asheville, North Carolina. She's going to school there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, the, as you mentioned a while ago, after you retired from DOE, it kind of freed some things up for you as far as your community involvement, didn't it? So what have you been doing?
MR. BOYD: There were two things that I couldn't do a lot of -- one was political fundraising.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: And now everybody in the community has realized I can do that now. (laughter) So I'm having to work a little extra to pay for that -- which I'm happy to do because I think it's important to keep high quality, good people in public office. So I help with that a little bit. But other things that I just didn't have time to do or I was conflicted out of, you know, were things like the Chamber of Commerce. I've served on the board of directors for the Chamber of Commerce in Oak Ridge. I'm now on the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce. I'm also on the board of directors for Covenant Health -- something that I could not have done in the past.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see.
MR. BOYD: I'm chairman of the board for the Boys' and Girls' Club -- something I could not have done before. My wife and I chaired the Anderson County United Way campaign -- something I could not have done before and that was a very rewarding experience to do that. So... and on the Oak Ridge Public School Education Foundation where we try to raise funds for grants for teachers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And I chair the church council at the First United Methodist Church so I'm involved in a lot of community things and ultimately that's kind of what I'd like to spend my time doing and not coming to the office every day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you know, you're having to make up for 30-something years of public service, I guess, in the community, so I imagine there are times you almost wish you could go back to that... (laughter) instead of having another meeting tonight.
MR. BOYD: Now it's... a schedule is very difficult no question about that, so...
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure, I'm sure... Well, this has been great -- this is what I wanted to talk to you about. Is there anything else you want to mention or talk about before we wrap things up?
MR. BOYD: The only thing I would say is that, you know, this, being here, was the best job in my career. And I had a lot of jobs, they were all in public service until I retired. I enjoyed every one of 'em. But this was, by far, you know, the most rewarding. I would say it was the most fun but quite often it wasn't fun. There were huge problems here that had to be dealt with every day. Any time you have thirteen- to fifteen-thousand people moving around with equipment and such, there are issues that you have to work through. But it's been the most rewarding experience of my life being in Oak Ridge and having the opportunity to be the manager at a time when the place was being revitalized, modernized, and taking on new missions, and new facilities and new research capabilities, all of that was very, very rewarding for me and I enjoyed it a lot. And there's still tremendous things going on in the Department of Energy and I believe will continue to do so for a long time. We also love living in Oak Ridge, in
the city. It's a great town and it looks to me that it's kind of on the verge of really blossoming out quite a lot in growth, so looking forward to spending my real retirement years here.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughter) Right, I understand. Well, Gerald thank you so much for taking time to talk with us.
MR. BOYD: Well, sir, I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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ORAL HISTORY OF GERALD BOYD
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
May 14, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is May 14, 2013, and I am at the office of Gerald Boyd here in Oak Ridge. Gerald, thank you for taking time to talk with us.
MR. BOYD: You're welcome. Glad to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's start at the beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised -- something about your upbringing.
MR. BOYD: Well, I'm actually a Tennessean. I was born in Old Hickory in Nashville -- Davidson County -- in 1950, so I'm 63 years old now. My mother and her family were all from west and middle Tennessee. My grandparents were in Old Hickory. My grandfather worked there all of his life. So I was born there and lived there for a number of years. My father was in construction and actually helped build the Old Hickory Dam; you know that's on the Old Hickory Lake there. And then we moved around the country after that for a while following construction jobs that he had. And within a few years, I don't remember exactly how long, we wound up in south Mississippi, where he was from -- his family was all from that part of the country. And he bought a farm and became a dairy farmer. I grew up on a farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: So how old were you when you moved to Mississippi?
MR. BOYD: I was about six.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, Is that right?
MR. BOYD: So, I went to school there and wound up finishing high school, going to Ole Miss to college. But I grew up on a dairy farm. I still wake up at 3 a.m. every morning.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. BOYD: Sometimes I can go back to sleep, sometimes I can't.
MR. MCDANIEL: When did you have to start milking cows?
MR. BOYD: Three o'clock.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean at what age?
MR. BOYD: At seven years old!
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Wow.
MR. BOYD: I did it my entire childhood until I, you know, graduated from high school, moved away to college and still came home and helped out a bit, you know, in the summertime and things of that nature.
MR. MCDANIEL: But you moved away so you could sleep late, didn't you? (laughs)
MR. BOYD: I did! (laughs) I did! But I still don't sleep late. Sort of gets in your system, I think.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have brothers or sisters?
MR. BOYD: I have one brother, Steven, and two sisters, Debbie and Sybil. They all still live in Mississippi. When we graduated from high school, we all went our separate ways to the four corners of the earth and over time, they have migrated back and so they're all there together. Live in the same neighborhood, as a matter of fact.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. BOYD: So they've been trying to get me to come back down there. But I probably won't do that any time soon. My two daughters are here so we'll likely stay here. But I grew up on a dairy farm and when I got out of high school I went off to Ole Miss to college. Got a bachelor's degree in -- a double major in chemistry and biology which got me into the science world which I enjoyed a lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, Ole Miss, I may be making a huge mistake, but Ole Miss is in Oxford, is that right?
MR. BOYD: That's correct. That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: I didn't want to get confused... Ole Miss...
MR. BOYD: Mississippi State.
MR. MCDANIEL: Mississippi State.
MR. BOYD: Yeah, they're in different parts of the world. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, they are! (laughs)
MR. BOYD: In fact, I went to college at Ole Miss with Archie Manning.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. BOYD: He and I are the same age. You know, we weren't best friends or anything like that, but he was the hero on campus. I used to go to... All his football games were there -- his last one when he broke his arm and finally graduated and moved away. Up until that point, Ole Miss had been a real star in football. After that, it all ... (laughs) went away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went away. How funny.
MR. BOYD: So, I finished college and in that time, it was a little difficult to get a job so for two years I taught chemistry and biology in high school south of Jackson, Mississippi. After that, I got a call from the State of Mississippi to see if I was interested in helping them set up an emergency preparedness program. They were looking for somebody with a technical degree -- with a science degree -- that could deal with some of the scientific topics that they were interested in doing. So, I went to work for the State of Mississippi for about seven years.
MR. MCDANIEL: And this was what time period?
MR. BOYD: 1972 -- starting in 1972. That's when I graduated from... well, starting in 1974 when I went to work for the state. I taught high school for two years -- '72 to '74. During that period of time, I worked in a research lab doing research on reflective coatings. It was some of the early research that was done that you now see on the highway with reflective paint.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. Sure.
MR. BOYD: So, back in 1972, there was not such a thing. So the lab that I worked in was doing research on trying to figure out, you know, how you could actually make that work. It wasn't hard to get the reflective coating, it was hard to keep it on the road, so we had to do a lot of adhesives work. And so I did that for a period of time, went to work for the State of Mississippi in what is now the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. And I was there for about seven years, and then I was asked to leave and go to the regional office for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Thomasville, Georgia.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. So for the Federal Emergency Management.
MR. BOYD: Right. So, I left the State Emergency Management Agency and went to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the Southeast Region which had eight states in it. We did emergency planning for nuclear power plant incidents. Three Mile Island had happened about that time and there was a big planning effort around nuclear power plants in communities. And there was an awful lot of national security emergency planning that was being done at that time and I was involved in those sorts of things for the eight states in the Southeast. From there then, I was asked to go to the National Emergency Training Center for FEMA which was in Emmetsburg, Maryland, and I left Thomasville and went to Maryland, and was up there for about 20 years before I came back to Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, Is that right?
MR. BOYD: Yeah, in 2002.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, did you work for FEMA for that whole time you were there?
MR. BOYD: No, I worked for FEMA for part of the time I was there and then I went to work for the Department of Energy. Worked most of the time that I was in Washington was with DOE. I was up there for about 20 years. And then transferred to Oak Ridge from DOE headquarters.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did you do at DOE up in Washington?
MR. BOYD: Well, I was at the National Emergency Training Center for FEMA. I was responsible for emergency planning for transportation accidents, nuclear power plant off-site preparedness and those kinds of things. And DOE was starting to set up the EM program -- the Environmental Management program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: And as they started to put that together, they needed somebody with an Emergency Planning background to help set up the emergency preparedness program within the Department of Energy for the environmental clean-up piece. So I got a call from a guy by the name of Larry Harmon and asked me if I was interested in doing it. I had been with FEMA for about seven years or so, up there. I was the Deputy Superintendent of the Emergency Management Institute at the time, which was a great experience. And so I decided I needed to try my hand at something a little bigger and more challenging and so I transferred over to the Department of Energy in 1998...or 1989... yeah, 1989. Then spent the rest of my time in Washington at the Department of Energy. I was responsible for emergency planning, preparedness for the environmental management office, transportation management, and those kinds of things. And then ultimately got involved in the science and technology program helping manage a program to design and develop technologies to improve clean-up progress in the EM program and ultimately became the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology for the Department.
MR. MCDANIEL: I want to stop right there -- I want to go back and ask you about your FEMA. While you were at FEMA were there any big, you know, national disasters, or things such as that that you were involved in?
MR. BOYD: Three Mile Island occurred when I was with FEMA.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. BOYD: And there was a major new effort to do preparedness planning in communities around nuclear power plants as a result of the Three Mile Island incident. There was a new regulatory guide that NRC crafted and put together as a result of Three Mile Island occurring and I was part of that. I helped design that and get that regulatory guide in place and then followed that with emergency planning activities. There were a number of natural disasters that occurred. I was involved in that to some degree but not a lot. For the most part, I was in the power plant/national security.
MR. MCDANIEL: Nuclear.
MR. BOYD: The nuclear component of it. Transportation of, you know, radioactive and hazardous materials -- I was doing that sort of work which was the reason that DOE was interested in me coming over to work with them is because of the experience that I've had there. So I was involved in some of the natural disaster activity that went on back in those days, but ...the National Flood Insurance Program which you hear a lot about today -- I was part of helping start that. Didn't play a big role in it but I was part of that. It was the very beginning of a National Flood Insurance Program. So there was some natural disaster work I did, but most of it was...
MR. MCDANIEL: Preparedness around the power plants, as you said... So, you said you ended up being the Deputy Director of Science and Technology?
MR. BOYD: The Deputy Assistant Secretary is what the title is. It's a long title. But I was in charge of science and technology for the Department of Energy for environmental issues. So we had teams all over the DOE complex -- we had a team here in Oak Ridge. So we funded all the science and technology effort -- the research and development effort that went on -- to put new technologies in place, to improve the way clean-up was being done and they're being used today all across the DOE complex.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I'm sure that whole time period there where you were involved there were lots of new technologies being developed, you know, and things such as that, that were, like you said, were put in place and still being used.
MR. BOYD: The gunite tanks here at Oak Ridge, I don't know if you've heard about those or not, but they were tanks with radioactive waste buried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They had to be remediated -- meaning that everything had to be taken out of them. So we designed and developed technologies to retrieve that radioactive waste and to remediate those tanks. And those technologies are still being used around the complex today. We did a lot of work in mixed waste, a lot of work in high-level waste, work in D&D and those sorts of things, where we develop technologies to help with that type of work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you're still in the work place so I'll be gentle about how I ask this question. What was the difference between working for the state and working for the Federal Government. Of course, I know there was a big time period difference there, but... you know, you worked for Mississippi for, you said, seven years.
MR. BOYD: Seven years, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: And then you've basically been with the Federal Government?
MR. BOYD: For about thirty.
MR. MCDANIEL: For about thirty years. What is the difference?
MR. BOYD: The politics are dramatically different with the Federal Government, especially in Washington. When you're in a senior position in a federal agency in Washington, you're much closer to the political aspects of what Washington's all about.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: When I was with the state, I was much younger, had a much lower level position. Didn't see a lot of that. There's plenty of state politics but I didn't experience it quite like I did toward the end of my career in work at the Department of Energy because I'd, sort of risen through the ranks, got closer to where the political games are played and you have to live with that. That's a big difference. The resources available to do the job, even though, you know, federal funding these days is difficult to come by, but the Federal Government certainly has a lot more resources to do something than most state governments do. So, there's a big difference in politics, big difference in resources available to do the job. But either one, public service meant a lot to me. I mean, you're doing real work for real people. Doing things that need to be done and it's not about the almighty dollar it's about trying to do something that is mission-related to the health and welfare of the population of this country. So, my public service, which was almost 38 years counting my high school teaching time, was a very, very rewarding time in my life. I enjoyed it a lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you're at DOE, you're the Assistant Deputy...
MR. BOYD: Deputy Assistant Secretary. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Deputy Assistant Secretary and, I guess, you get tapped on the shoulder and said, "Would you like to go to Oak Ridge?"
MR. BOYD: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about that.
MR. BOYD: Well, we had a new Assistant Secretary who was -- an Assistant Secretary is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and so she was my immediate boss. There were about eight or 10 of us that were Deputy Assistant Secretaries that worked directly for her and she had vacancies coming up all over the complex. And so she asked us if we were interested in going to a field office. And some of us said, “Yes, we were,” some said, “No.” So she asked, you know, where would you like to go; give me your three top priorities. And Oak Ridge was my number one pick and, fortunately, bless her heart, she let me come here. Otherwise, I would have wound up at Savannah River or somewhere like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But wanted to come back to Tennessee, wanted to be at Oak Ridge. Always had a lot of respect for what goes on in Oak Ridge. Not that the other sites don't do very good work, but the variety of work at Oak Ridge is dramatically broader than what you see at many of the other sites and it's a very exciting place to be, so that was in 2002 that I left Washington and came here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now, your children were, I guess, young at that point. They'd been, I guess, were born and grew up in Washington.
MR. BOYD: They were born in Maryland. I lived in Maryland, commuted into DC every day to work. They were both born there and were taken home to the house that they lived in their whole life until we moved here. So, one was in the eighth grade and the other was in the ninth grade and so...
MR. MCDANIEL: It was tough.
MR. BOYD: It was a big deal. It was hard decision to make. We weren't sure we were going to do it. Kids had never lived any other place, that's where they'd lived all their life. But they made the transition well. It took about six months before ...they were okay with it...
MR. MCDANIEL: Everybody was happy, right?
MR. BOYD: Correct. Oak Ridge is home, now. I mean everybody loves it here, so it's been good.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you came to Oak Ridge? What was your title?
MR. BOYD: I came here to manage the environmental clean-up program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. BOYD: So for the first year, I was here, I was the assistant manager for EM -- for Environmental Management. That was the reason that I came to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: And what was going on at that time here on the reservation?
MR. BOYD: At the time that I got here, and part of the reason my boss in Washington at the time wanted me to come here, is we were starting what we call the Accelerated Clean-Up Program. So, when I got here in 2002, my job was to develop an accelerated clean-up plan for Oak Ridge. We had Bechtel Jacobs as the contractor who was doing the work for us. They had an M&I-type contract -- a management and integration contract. We wrote an accelerated clean-up plan. The purpose of that plan was to really put a big effort -- a big push on tearing down big buildings. Up until that point, a lot of the work had been soil remediation, dealing with some of the groundwater problems, and doing an awful lot of planning and preparation to get ready for the big D&D work.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they were Bechtel Jacobs, weren’t they? I know they were doing like the K-25 site. But were they doing like at Y-12, and at ORNL?
MR. BOYD: There was very little work going on at ORNL and Y-12. At the time, it was mostly just surveillance and maintenance because there wasn't adequate funding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And so, when we wrote the accelerated clean-up plan, we converted the contract that they had to a closure contract, put them on a path to tearing down big buildings.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: So it was D&D was the priority whenever I got here, we got that plan written. And then for the next, almost 10 years, I guess, that's what the effort was. During that period, we started to recognize that there were issues at ORNL and Y-12 that were serious in nature. Shortly after I got here, we had a release of strontium at the Laboratory that went up a big stack out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: And it contaminated a large part of the parking area for the Laboratory. Cars were contaminated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? And that was just an accidental release, obviously?
MR. BOYD: Yes, it was. But that pinpointed the fact that we've got a lot of issues at the Laboratory that need to be dealt with.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: So we started then to build a plan for doing work at the Laboratory and Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let me ask you a question at this point. So, this was 2002...
MR. BOYD: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, who was running the Laboratory at that point?
MR. BOYD: Bill Madia was the Lab Director.
MR. MCDANIEL: And the company was...BW.
MR. BOYD: UT-Battelle.
MR. MCDANIEL: UT-Battelle.
MR. BOYD: UT-Battelle took over the Laboratory in 2000. Bill Madia was the first Laboratory Director under UT-Battelle. I came here in 2002.
MR. MCDANIEL: And what about Y-12?
MR. BOYD: Y-12, it was BWXT at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, but Y-12 was it under DOE or was it under NNSA?
MR. BOYD: It was still under DOE at the time. NNSA was starting to be formed. And it was around the 2002-2003 time frame that NNSA was formed and Y-12 then became part of that. Although that was the case, there was still a lot of environmental work that had to be done at Y-12 which was my responsibility even though I wasn't part of NNSA so it took a lot of coordination between NNSA and DOE people to make sure that that got done properly.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sorry. So, okay, so, I just wanted to make that clear. So you said there was the accidental release and the contamination of a lot of the vehicles and things such as that and that was at the Lab and that made you realize there were some serious issues there that needed to be dealt with.
MR. BOYD: We were doing two things during that period of time. One was the accelerated clean-up plan which was aimed mostly at the K-25 site. Then we started putting a plan together which we called IFDP which is Integrated Facility Disposition Project, and its purpose was to deal with the contamination in the facilities at Y-12 and ORNL. And it was triggered by that release in 2002 that then sort of spotlighted for us that we really needed to do something about this so we started to put a plan together to do that. Never was able to get adequate funding for that -- for the Laboratory and Y-12 -- until the Recovery Act occurred. And when the Recovery Act occurred and stimulus funds started to flow, we got almost a billion dollars at Oak Ridge to do work at ORNL and Y-12 and so we were able to implement that plan now. It is far from being finished. The K-25 site is getting close to getting close to being finished but the Laboratory and Y-12 still have a fairly substantial amount of environmental clean-up that's going to have to be done.
MR. MCDANIEL: At Y-12?
MR. BOYD: And ORNL.
MR. MCDANIEL: And ORNL?
MR. BOYD: At both sites...
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, at what point... You came to Oak Ridge to be the head of Environmental Management and then you became the ...operations...?
MR. BOYD: Operations Manager
MR. MCDANIEL: Operations Manager...
MR. BOYD: Yeah, I came here in 2002 and for one year I was the Environmental Management assistant manager.
MR. MCDANIEL: Who was the Operations Manager when you came here?
MR. BOYD: There was Jim Hall had left, Leah Deaver had come in behind Jim. She had left and so there wasn't anybody who was permanent for that year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: There were some people that were in on a temporary basis but we didn't have a manager for that first year that I was here. And then I was asked, after a year of managing the clean-up program, if I would take over the Operations office which still had the clean-up program underneath it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right... Exactly.
MR. BOYD: So I became the Manager in 2003 until I retired in 2011.
MR. MCDANIEL: 2011...Well, let's talk a little bit about, you know, when you were in Oak Ridge. I know the environmental clean-up were some of the big issues. What were some of the big issues for Oak Ridge that, you know... Oak Ridge has always been a Federal town, I mean, so anything that happens with the Federal Government and its workers in Oak Ridge effects the community. So what were some of the big issues in your tenure here with the Federal Government and Oak Ridge that you had to deal with or you saw or maybe that came up that have not been resolved yet.
MR. BOYD: Well there are a couple of things -- some positive, some negative.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: We had just started -- the department had just started a modernization effort at the Laboratory when I got here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. BOYD: UT-Battelle was brought in, they gave us a plan that said, we can modernize the Laboratory and turn it into a world-class research lab for the department. And so, we started that process. And over a period of time the entire east and west end of the Laboratory has been modernized -- new facilities. One of the big issues that was at play, internationally, was high speed computing. United States had lost its lead there and that led, then, to an investment by the department to build a high speed computer -- Jaguar -- that's out at the Laboratory today and took back that leadership position from the Japanese. So that was a big thing -- we were trying to modernize the Lab, get leadership computing back, get neutron science back -- we'd lost neutron ...the leadership position in the world to Europe for neutron sciences. The Spallation Neutron Source then brought that back to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: At the same time, that we were doing those things to modernize, we were using third-party funding to do that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. BOYD: So that meant that we'd bring third-party money in, somebody would build the building and we would lease it back. What that does is to put the building on the tax rolls because federal property is not on the tax rolls -- federal buildings are not on the tax rolls.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: So a big issue with the community was always the fact that the Federal Government owned 70 percent of the town but didn't pay taxes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. BOYD: And we paid -- we had payments in lieu of taxes, but they were at a much, much lower rate than a property tax rate. The result of that was there was always a tension there between the department and the community because of that. The result of using third-party financing and building buildings with third-party money and putting those buildings on the tax rolls then increased the revenue -- tax revenue coming into the city which helped a great deal with the relationship between the community and the Department of Energy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: That was one of the, you know, one of the larger issues is, how do you deal with that?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Land use has always been a big issue in Oak Ridge. Most of the real scenic places in Oak Ridge belong to the Federal Government -- most of the river system is Federal land up to the river. It's only on the east end where the city has access to the river on an easy basis. So that's always been an issue of: What do you keep for the federal mission? What do you put in some kind of conservation easement to protect it for eternity as natural, pristine land?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: What do you transfer to the community for re-use.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. BOYD: And we've got a mixture of that in Oak Ridge. Transferring property out on the west end as we clean up K-25 was a good way to transfer property to the community that can be used for economic development purposes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. BOYD: And turning the central campus of the Laboratory into a science and technology park that can bring private industry in and connect with the Laboratory and then transfer technology out of the Laboratory that is good for economic development. So, those kinds of things help the community quite a lot in, you know, dealing with their economic development positions, tax revenues that they need. There's always an issue that will continue between, you know, a big Federal entity sitting right in the middle of a small town.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But we've been able to work those out pretty well over time. I think of all the DOE sites, the relationship between the community and the Department of Energy is better at Oak Ridge than it is anywhere else.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? That's what I was about to ask: Is that typical?
MR. BOYD: It's not typical. Some sites have a pretty good relationship; some have very bad relationships.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But Oak Ridge is probably the best. But Oak Ridge is the only one where the entire Federal operation sits inside the city limits of a town.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. BOYD: Hanford is not that way, Idaho's not that way, Savannah River is not that way, Albuquerque’s not that way. There are DOE sites that are adjacent to communities but not sitting inside the city limits. And so that puts a very different tension into play when it's that way. (coughs) Let me take a break.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, go ahead...Let me ask you this. I know as the Operations Director for DOE and Oak Ridge, you were kind of in charge of all the federal operations, but, you know, the ORNL and Y-12 and K-25 at some point were all... ORNL and Y-12 are still vibrant industrial complexes. How much of what they do, they kind of do on their own and how much was it directly involved with your office. I know you had oversight, but, 'How autonomous were they?' I guess is the question.
MR. BOYD: All of the DOE contractors are fairly autonomous. This is true in a lot of Federal agencies. You give them a contract with the mission that you want them to carry out, certain end products that you expect to see and you let them do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see.
MR. BOYD: But you have to oversee that contract, you have to oversee the safety functions, you have to oversee the milestones that they are supposed to meet and deliver the product.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: So there was a lot of oversight from... and continues to be by the Federal Government. But once you have given a Laboratory contractor a task: "Build the Spallation Neutron Source. Here's the money you need to do it." Then there are periodic reviews that are done to make sure that they're on track, but you let them build it. You let them do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: It's the same way at Y-12. You tell them how many components that you expect to see and then you let them do it but you do reviews and you do oversight to assure that it's getting done. But the Federal Government, the Department of Energy, sets what those things are.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course.
MR. BOYD: Now, there is a real cooperative planning effort that goes on between the Laboratory and the Department of Energy to say, you know, we, as the Laboratory, believe that DOE should do XYZ, then DOE decides whether or not that fits in the overall mission and ultimately gives work plan for the contractor to follow.
MR. MCDANIEL: I guess the contractor, the Laboratory, I mean, you know, they have certain ... a certain set of skills that they're good at and that they have people who can look at the overall -- just like DOE -- can look at the big picture and say 10 years or 15 or 20 years from now we really need to be here as a country and this is how we think we can help get there.
MR. BOYD: That's exactly right. There's a tremendous amount of collaboration between the DOE contractors and the Department itself. It's more so that way in the scientific community. The environmental clean-up community's a little bit different in that DOE's pretty, you know, strict about, ‘Here are the five things we want you to do.' So there's less, probably, collaboration in that arena, but certainly in the scientific arena there's a lot of collaboration between the Department and the scientific contractors -- the Laboratory contractors because -- you just have the smartest people on the planet in these laboratories and you're going to use them to figure out what you ought to be doing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. But I would imagine the downside of having the smartest people on the planet there is, you know, like we've always said in Oak Ridge -- Every Oak Ridger has an opinion and they usually have four or five. (laughter) So what makes people good at what they do sometimes comes along with a little bit of baggage of being strong-willed, too. I'm sure your years in Washington really helped you learn to be able to...
MR. BOYD: Deal with a lot of big egos...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's exactly right...
MR. BOYD: Yeah... You know, it depends on what type of manager you are, what type of person you are. I don't - I have never liked to go into a room to solve a problem and be the smartest person in the room. I have worked for people who are like that. They've got to be the smartest person in the room and do all the talking. I think the smarter people that you can get around you to work a problem, the better off you are. You just have to know how to manage that environment because there are strong opinions, there are strong-willed people who have those opinions and it takes a certain amount of finesse to work it all and make it work and we had plenty of that in Oak Ridge. We had plenty of strong-willed people, plenty of smart people, plenty of egos, so...
MR. MCDANIEL: I have a friend who's a film director and he was a kindergarten teacher for 10 years and I said that was the perfect experience for him to become a film director is to manage creative folks...
MR. BOYD: Herd people around...
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely! That would be a difficult task I would imagine. What were some of the things that came along in your tenure, before you retired from DOE here at Oak Ridge that, you know, you really wanted to accomplish but for some reason you just weren't able to?
MR. BOYD: Well, primary thing is still the environmental clean-up at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at Y-12. To me that is the undone thing that I would have like to have seen at least farther along in its path. It was not going to happen in my tenure but we got the plan together, we got in the baseline, we got in regulatory documents with the state. It's now planned for the out years but it's moving along a lot slower than I'd hoped for. That's the single thing that, you know, we didn't get accomplished.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: We built the fastest computer on the planet, the most powerful neutron source on the planet, the most powerful electron microscope on the planet -- all of that got done. But the thing that we didn't do was to finish up our environmental work at the Lab and at Y-12 while I was in office. That doesn't mean that it's not continuing today but it's on a much slower pace than I would have hoped that it could have been.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were there... were there big projects, I mean, big -- as Dr. Weinberg said, big science projects that you would have like to have gotten to Oak Ridge but maybe one of the other DOE got that project?
MR. BOYD: Well, you know, I don't think so, because we had so many big science projects starting in 2000 up until ... you know, just, still going. But the things that we did over that 10-12 year period of time were about all anybody really should be trying to manage. Building the Spallation Neutron Source, building the high-speed computer, making sure that, you know, everything that needs to be done to go around that is important. Modernizing the High Flux Isotope Reactor, building the first carbon fiber facility for demonstration purposes. Building four institutes with the state on the campus, jointly with the state. Those were the big -- those were big science projects.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. BOYD: And big machines in some regards, too. So, no, I don't regret, from my personal experience -- you ask the Lab Director, they may have some different view - but from my personal experience I have no regrets about what we got accomplished in Oak Ridge while I was here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And I'm not taking credit for that; I was part of a huge team of people that made it happen. But I'm not dissatisfied with any of that. I guess the single thing that I would have liked to see more progress on was clean-up at the Lab and Y-12. Those were the two things that we didn't get done to the degree that I would have liked to have seen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk a little bit about the preservation efforts. And you might be able to explain this a little bit better than I could, as far as -- DOE, from my understanding, DOE has ... they have a kind of stated commitment to historic preservation of its sites and things such as that. Can you explain that a little bit better as far as what their mission is for that?
MR. BOYD: Well, the department has a general historic preservation commitment. It's largely general in nature and it has to be defined at every one of the sites because each of the sites are different, there is a different historical play at each site. What we did in Oak Ridge is not the same thing they did in Hanford or what they did at Idaho, so you have to define what you think that preservation piece ought to look like.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: We attempted to do that here at Oak Ridge and it's certainly things like the Graphite Reactor. The first, you know, operating, full scale reactor ever built anywhere in the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: So it's preserved as a, you know, a museum today.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Lots of things that are of historic significance -- artifacts, documents, equipment, those sorts of things -- have been taken out of facilities and preserved in a way that they can be displayed. They may not be at this point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: The museum itself is an example of, “How do you preserve certain things for historical purposes?” I think there's been a significant amount of disappointment, in a lot of people's eyes, that we weren't able to do more with things like the K-25 building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: There was hope that we could save part of that building, make a museum out of it and people for years to come could actually walk inside. Bill Wilcox and I have had this discussion time and time again, and we desperately tried to do that but the building was never built to stand for a long time. It was built strong, 'cause tearing it down has been a problem, but it was deteriorating in a way -- and was allowed to deteriorate for so long -- and it was deteriorating in a way that you could not fix it with any reasonable amount of funding. So we had to come with a different way to preserve the memory of what that plant was there for, what it did, how it contributed to the nation, but it's not quite what people would have liked. People would have liked to have seen something different but I think it's... the fact is, we waited far too long to try to do that. It was just un-doable. But I think the department has done a pretty good job of making sure that the history and the story of Oak Ridge can continue to be told. The national park idea certainly will help with that if that ultimately comes into being. So I think the department has done a good job. Clearly at Hanford, we've salvaged some of the reactors out there -- that was the big play they had. So some of that has been preserved. A lot of preservation has taken place at Los Alamos, so between Hanford, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge that covers the Manhattan era for the most part. And I think we've done a fairly good job. It would have been better to have been able to save a lot more but under the circumstances I think it's probably a pretty good job.
MR. MCDANIEL: The, you know, there would be people -- and you may want to comment or not comment on this -- there are people who say, “Let's forget our history. We need to forget about that and move forward -- build a new future.” And then there are those who seem to focus on just the history. And then there's, hopefully, some of us kind of in the middle who say, “It's important to remember it but we also need to not remember in detriment to our future, either.” So, I'm sure that's not only in the community but it's also in the Federal concept of what these sites should be.
MR. BOYD: Absolutely. In Oak Ridge, I think we are building the future -- I mean, at a fast pace. What's been done at the Laboratory and Y-12 in the last 10 to 12 years is just amazing. I mean, we haven't forgotten about our history but we certainly have built a new future at the Laboratory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: The Laboratory is not doing what it started out to do today. I mean, it was related to World War II, it was related to nuclear weapons. The Laboratory today is science and, you know, far-reaching new ways of doing things. So we're building the future in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: And I think it's important that we remember where it, you know, where it all comes from. Clearly, there are people in the Department of Energy who would not spend a single penny on historic preservation if it was their call. There are a few who would spend a lot more, but there're not many of them. So most everybody is in the middle somewhere wanting not to spend huge amounts of money but do what is absolutely necessary to preserve those critical pieces of history that we need to preserve.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I would imagine, in your position, you were kind of caught sometimes in the middle between Washington and the community with those kinds of issues and you probably had some tough things to deal with.
MR. BOYD: Absolutely. My personal view -- and it may be because I spent so much time with Bill Wilcox -- I probably would have done more than what we've done if it had been my personal call.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: But you get budgets to do things with and you have to live with that and you have to make the best of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: I think it's important to remember the history of where you came from because everything that is being done at the Laboratory today in particular has roots back in what it started out to do. It may not be doing that same mission any more, but the scientific discoveries and the techniques and the technology that they developed in those days are now being used to do other things totally unrelated to what it started for.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And you have to look back at that and know how you got to where you are; what was the basis for it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And it's important to people who came here in 1942-43 and spent the rest of their life here, to be able to commemorate what they did on behalf of the American people. And so, I think there's a balance that you have to achieve and, as you said earlier, for every opinion... or for every person there's four opinions! (laughter) You have to sort through that and try to make it optimal to whoever you can...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, I understand. I guess part of being a good upper-level manager is knowing when to speak and when not, isn't it?
MR. BOYD: Right. It is. And, quite often, we never get that perfect either.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure...
MR. BOYD: There are times when I'm a lot better at it than others. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure... (laughter) So you retired from the DOE in, when? 2012?
MR. BOYD: Eleven, 2011...
MR. MCDANIEL: So, just a year and a half, two years ago?
MR. BOYD: Yeah...
MR. MCDANIEL: And you went to work in the private sector?
MR. BOYD: I took some time off when I, you know, first retired. I had not had a month's vacation in 38 years so I took a couple of months. But, you know, I still wanted to work and probably will for a couple more years. But I wanted to go to work for somebody that I didn't have a big conflict of interest with and almost all the contractors around here I had worked with very closely and it's, you get to be a senior official in the Federal Government you have to be careful about what you do when you leave that position.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: So I went to work for Stoller Corporation out of Colorado because they were not here, they were not in Oak Ridge. They wanted to open an office here, I wanted to stay here and I wanted to continue to work for some period of time. It's an environmental company which I know quite a lot about that business.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And try and help them grow their business for the next few years. I don't know how long I will do it. I'm doing a lot of community service work that I was unable to do when I was with the Federal Government.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Some of it because I didn't have time, some of it because of conflict of interest or because of rules, I could not do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Before we get to that -- I want to get to that, that's kind of what I want to end up with -- but let's kind of go back to when you first came to Oak Ridge with your family. Let's talk about your family life and your social life here in Oak Ridge. I would imagine it would have been -- as you just mentioned -- it would have been difficult to get deeply involved in the community other than in your position because of your position.
MR. BOYD: Correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because, just one thing, you probably worked all the time and didn't have time for it, plus, I would imagine, that you... there are some things you just couldn't do because of that.
MR. BOYD: That's true. You know, when we got here, because it was a new job and we had a lot of big things we were trying to do...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: Accelerate clean-up plan for the clean-up, new plan for modernizing the Laboratory, even a lot of the planning for modernizing of Y-12 was starting about that time. Modernizing the ORNL campus -- those were all big things we were working on and I spent huge amounts of time working.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: So, my wife, BJ, did not work for the first number of years because we had the kids just transitioning then, getting into a new school. So she spent a lot of time with them; I got to spend a whole lot less time with them than I wanted to, but I saw 'em on the weekends quite a lot -- had to travel quite a lot while I was doing that, so social time was generally our, sort of, nuclear family.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. BOYD: We were involved in church so we spent quite a lot of time in our church life. And we had, you know, friends. I made friends pretty easily. I had to be careful about the friendships, what I did, where I went because of perceptions that is of, you know, a tax-paid-for Federal official, you're not doing something you shouldn't do, but you're still able to socialize to some degree. We got to know the neighbors in our community and we were able to spend some time with them. We also, as often as possible, would go and visit family.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay...
MR. BOYD: Because, you know, we spent all of our adult life a thousand miles away from our family until we moved back to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Where's your wife's family from?
MR. BOYD: She's from Alabama. York, Alabama, which is south of Tuscaloosa. So, we were a thousand miles away from our family for 20-something years and coming back here put us a lot closer and we were able to, you know, spend more time with our family and that was helpful, meaningful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. BOYD: And my wife got involved at the high school in cheerleading and coaching and things of that nature and the kids were involved in all those kinds of things. So that's what we spent most of our time, is sort of wrapped around whatever it was the kids were involved in.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, of course. Now, you have two girls?
MR. BOYD: Two daughters.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they're both out of the house now?
MR. BOYD: Well one is... One is not. Erin -- my older daughter, she's still at... she lives at home. Thank goodness, 'cause my wife and I travel all the time, she takes care of the house. My other daughter, Katy, is in Asheville, North Carolina. She's going to school there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, the, as you mentioned a while ago, after you retired from DOE, it kind of freed some things up for you as far as your community involvement, didn't it? So what have you been doing?
MR. BOYD: There were two things that I couldn't do a lot of -- one was political fundraising.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. BOYD: And now everybody in the community has realized I can do that now. (laughter) So I'm having to work a little extra to pay for that -- which I'm happy to do because I think it's important to keep high quality, good people in public office. So I help with that a little bit. But other things that I just didn't have time to do or I was conflicted out of, you know, were things like the Chamber of Commerce. I've served on the board of directors for the Chamber of Commerce in Oak Ridge. I'm now on the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce. I'm also on the board of directors for Covenant Health -- something that I could not have done in the past.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see.
MR. BOYD: I'm chairman of the board for the Boys' and Girls' Club -- something I could not have done before. My wife and I chaired the Anderson County United Way campaign -- something I could not have done before and that was a very rewarding experience to do that. So... and on the Oak Ridge Public School Education Foundation where we try to raise funds for grants for teachers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. BOYD: And I chair the church council at the First United Methodist Church so I'm involved in a lot of community things and ultimately that's kind of what I'd like to spend my time doing and not coming to the office every day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you know, you're having to make up for 30-something years of public service, I guess, in the community, so I imagine there are times you almost wish you could go back to that... (laughter) instead of having another meeting tonight.
MR. BOYD: Now it's... a schedule is very difficult no question about that, so...
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure, I'm sure... Well, this has been great -- this is what I wanted to talk to you about. Is there anything else you want to mention or talk about before we wrap things up?
MR. BOYD: The only thing I would say is that, you know, this, being here, was the best job in my career. And I had a lot of jobs, they were all in public service until I retired. I enjoyed every one of 'em. But this was, by far, you know, the most rewarding. I would say it was the most fun but quite often it wasn't fun. There were huge problems here that had to be dealt with every day. Any time you have thirteen- to fifteen-thousand people moving around with equipment and such, there are issues that you have to work through. But it's been the most rewarding experience of my life being in Oak Ridge and having the opportunity to be the manager at a time when the place was being revitalized, modernized, and taking on new missions, and new facilities and new research capabilities, all of that was very, very rewarding for me and I enjoyed it a lot. And there's still tremendous things going on in the Department of Energy and I believe will continue to do so for a long time. We also love living in Oak Ridge, in
the city. It's a great town and it looks to me that it's kind of on the verge of really blossoming out quite a lot in growth, so looking forward to spending my real retirement years here.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughter) Right, I understand. Well, Gerald thank you so much for taking time to talk with us.
MR. BOYD: Well, sir, I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]